(VIDEO) Glenn Beck Defends Gruesome Occupy Wall Street Warnings: 'These People Are Dangerous'

Katherine Fung



On Tuesday, Glenn Beck defended his controversial remarks that Occupy Wall Street protesters would "kill" the wealthy.



He had given a stark warning about the Occupy Wall Street movement on Monday, painting protesters as "Marxist radicals" who would "drag you into the streets and kill you." Rachel Maddow, among others, has mocked Beck for his gruesome warning.



On Tuesday, Beck reiterated that he stands by his controversial remarks. He said that some of the protesters were very well "Marxist revolutionaries" and that his warning pertained to the protests spiraling out of control. "These people are dangerous," he warned, adding that political leaders do not have the foresight to see the storm coming.



He then ticked off what he said were the crimes committed by Marxist revolutionaries, including Che Guevara, Mao and Stalin. Echoing his earlier warning about the Occupy Wall Street protesters, he said, "Do you know why people starved to death in the Ukraine? You know why socialism never works? Because they kill all the people who know how to make things. They kill all the industrialists. They kill them all. They drag them in the streets and kill them."



Coming back to the protests in New York, he said, "It ends in violence with Marxists every single time the same way" and alleged that demonstrations of Marxism were "wrapped in hate." He then went on to say that unlike the protests, his criticism of President Obama was never "personal" and alleged that President Obama is "a die-hard Marxist."



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FBI Monitoring News Talk Radio for Investigations

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FBI Monitoring News Talk Radio for Investigations

Mark Weaver

WASHINGTON -- If you call a radio talk show and get on the air, you might be recorded by the FBI. The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet. The FBI says it is not playing big brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence. "This doesn't give us any enhanced capability, prying into or any 'big brother' concerns because this is information that's being put out on the airwaves," FBI spokesman Paul Bresson told WMAL.com.   "Its very important to our investigators to know what's being reported."  Bresson cites as an example of the case of the Times Square bomber.  "It's ideal for cases like that because we can extract information that's already been reported and help our investigators make better decisions." Read more at wmal.com

 

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The Greatest Blasphemy Ever Told

Coalition Of Advocates Demand End To Employment Credit Checks

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Civil Rights, Labor Advocates Demand End To Employment Credit Checks

WASHINGTON -- A coalition of 25 civil rights and labor advocacy groups petitioned one of the nation's largest credit-monitoring firms on Tuesday to quit selling consumer credit info to employers.

Using credit histories to screen job applicants, the groups said, can trap the jobless and disproportionately burden black and Latino candidates. They want TransUnion, one of the Big Three credit companies alongside Equifax and Experian, to stop making credit reports available.

"As the only privately-held company of the big three, TransUnion has the ability to stop this practice overnight without worrying about stockholder reaction," said UniteHere spokeswoman Anne Marie Strassel.

Roughly 60 percent of companies factor credit information into hiring decisions, according to a 2010 survey by the Society of Human Resource Management, which supports the practice. The rate of employment credit checks increased from 35 percent in 2003 and 19 percent in 1996.

"Employers understand that individuals, who have been unemployed as a result of these difficult times, may have also had difficulty keeping up with their financial obligations," TransUnion spokeswoman Colleen Tunney-Ryan said in a statement. "What employers are interested in, is whether an individual acted prudently while he or she was employed. A pre-employment report is one tool to help them assess that."

There is no data reflecting how frequently job applicants are passed over because of bad credit.

HuffPost readers: Turned down for a job or a promotion because of crappy credit? Tell us about it -- email arthur@huffingtonpost.com. Please include your phone number if you're willing to do an interview.

On Monday, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a bill banning most businesses in the state from using credit checks to screen potential workers, making California the seventh state to restrict the practice. TransUnion has lobbied against state efforts to curtail its business.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is currently suing two companies for reasons related to credit checks, held hearings on the practice last year. "The EEOC is concerned that not hiring people with poor credit may exclude qualified job seekers and some minority groups, and therefore may be discriminatory under civil rights law," EEOC spokeswoman Christine Nazer said in a statement to HuffPost.

"Employers need to show that the use of credit records is job-related and consistent with business necessity," Nazer said. "Moreover, credit history screening is an area where job seekers may not even know why they didn't get a job, and we are interested in looking closely at whether there may be possible discrimination because of a disparate impact on certain protected groups."

The coalition of groups opposed to employment credit checks says credit scores for black and Latino workers are 5 to 35 percent lower than scores for white workers. They also say credit checks are an unfair criteria for the unemployed because people without jobs to pay the bills are more likely to have negative items on their credit reports. (Some employers simply won't consider jobless applicants at all, a form of discrimination President Obama wants to ban.)

"We believe these barriers are a contributing factor to the drastic unemployment numbers we see for people of color," said Barbara Arnwine, director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "These credit checks are often used as disguises for other kinds of racial bias."

The businesses surveyed by SHRM said they were most likely to check credit histories for potential employees whose jobs would include financial responsibilities. Outstanding liens and judgments were the credit problems most likely to cause an applicant to be turned away. A business can't run an applicant's credit history without his or her permission. Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com

 

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NYT Sues The Feds: New York Times Sues U.S. To Reveal Use Of PATRIOT Act

The Huffington Post Katherine Fung

The New York Times has sued the federal government for refusing to divulge how exactly it uses the PATRIOT Act.

The suit comes after Times reporter Charlie Savage filed several Freedom of Information requests for a classified report about the government's authority to collect intelligence under the PATRIOT Act, and was refused. He made the requests after two senators charged that Americans would be deeply disturbed by the government's use of the law.

The section of the act in question allows the government to order the production of "any tangible things” on “reasonable grounds" related to an international terrorism or counterintelligence investigation. The lawsuit demands the release of at least a redacted version of the report to explain what that allows.

Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have been alleging for months that the government is misleading the public about its secret interpretation of the law. In May, Senator Wyden said that the American people would be "stunned" and "angry" when they find out how the government is using the act.

The act has been hotly debated in recent months leading up to a vote that extended the government's controversial post-9/11 powers to search records and conduct roving wiretaps.

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Greening Disadvantaged Populations In The Name Of Environmental Justice

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Environmental Justice Strategy Aims To Address Inequities Among Low-Income, Minority And Tribal Groups

New Orleans children play in aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Thirty years after the Midnite Mine was closed, clean-up of the 33 million tons of radioactive remains at the site -- located within the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern Washington -- will finally begin. The new agreement to deal with the waste, reached between the federal government and one of the world's largest mining companies, comes after decades of ongoing concern over the inactive uranium mine's threats to tribal and environmental health.

The decision also reflects a growing recognition of the widespread and persistent disparities in the burden of toxic exposures.

Last Tuesday, at the inaugural SXSW Eco conference in Austin, Texas, Dr. J. Nadine Gracia, chief medical officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced the release of the 2012 HHS Draft Environmental Justice Strategy. The strategy, Gracia told HuffPost, "recognizes that Indian tribes are a target population with unique issues that we need to work with." The plan also addresses environmental health inequities among low-income and minority populations, and highlights everything from air pollution and unhealthy housing, to hazardous work conditions, environmental disasters and lack of access to nutritious foods or recreational opportunities. (Members of the public can submit comments on the draft until December 3. A final version will be released in February 2012.)

"Sometimes when we speak of the environment, there's little mention of health," said Gracia. "The issue of environmental justice provides one of the clearest examples of the relationship between the environment and health."

Bob Perciasepe, deputy administrator for the EPA, also emphasized the importance of this link and the need to protect all Americans from environmental health risks, especially those who are least able to help themselves. During a Wednesday panel at SXSW Eco, he told attendees that the "uneven distribution of exposures to pollutants" kept him up at night.

Other speakers pointed to model cases of environmental injustice including toxic exposures among agricultural workers and communities struck by the Gulf oil spill. Dr. Howard K. Koh, assistant secretary for health at HHS, referred to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans as a "tragic example of a terrible natural disaster striking a population that was very vulnerable to begin with, particularly minorities."

This is not the first time the federal government has recognized the environmental hazards disadvantaged communities face. The environmental justice movement began in earnest after reports in the 1980s found that hazardous waste facilities were more likely to be located in low-income and minority communities, prompting an executive order by President Clinton in 1994. The first environmental justice strategy was devised a year later.

The reinvigorated 2012 version of the strategic plan aims to further ensure that environmental justice factors into the federal decision-making process. The EPA, for example, recently released its own plan to integrate environmental justice into the agency's programs, policies and activities.

Among other revisions, Gracia noted the new strategy's enhanced focus on assisting states and tribes in identifying vulnerable populations, as well as improving weather surveillance and other public health preparations to help communities better respond to disasters. The plan now also formally addresses the effects of climate change -- from sea level rise and extreme weather events to exacerbated air pollution. Poor and minority populations may bear the brunt of these changes, suggest some experts.

Further, the new plan encourages the meaningful involvement of those affected. "One of the big changes is recognizing that environmental justice really is not just about protecting communities from these hazards, but is actually about building healthy communities and giving them capacity to do so," Gracia told HuffPost.

Mando Rayo, vice president of engagement for Cultural Strategies, noted in a Tuesday panel that minorities tend to welcome an opportunity to help protect the environment. "They are the ones seeing the issues related to a lot of these environmental problems," he said. Recent surveys, Rayo pointed out, also suggest that minorities are more concerned about pollution and global warming than the general American population.

Green building is a powerful place to start addressing environmental injustice while opening up new opportunities for employment, according to Elizabeth Galante, director of the non-profit group Global Green USA's New Orleans office. "If you want to do environmental work in Louisiana, you have to focus on economic equity," she said during a Thursday panel. "There are ways to use the built environment to create opportunities to inspire, teach and to lift communities out of poverty."

Galante helps lead an effort called Build It Back Green. Over the last three years, the team has visited every New Orleans neighborhood, bringing in construction experts to show residents how to perform weatherization and other green improvements to their homes. If a resident lacks the resources to pay a contractor to do the work, she said, the program will often cover the costs.

She told the story of one woman helped by the program. For three years prior to her upgrades, the woman had relied on an oxygen tank to breathe in her polluted home. Shortly after the upgrades, she sent the tank back. "It's not just about the energy bills," said Galante. "It's about health and quality of life."

Dana Bourland, vice president of Green Initiatives at Enterprise Community Partners, agreed that living in an energy inefficient house can be a "huge liability" -- likely resulting in energy costs four times as high as those residents of modern homes rack up.

"No more than two percent in total development costs is needed to achieve our energy and water standards," said Bourland. This comes out to about $1,900, while the payback is far greater: about $4,800 in energy and water savings, not to mention the health benefits, she said.

However, providing housing alone is not enough, Bourland said on Thursday's panel.

"As a country, we spend about $17 billion a year on gas just to sit in congestion," she said, noting that low-income households are often disproportionately affected; about 70 percent of their income is spent on housing and transportation. "At the end of the day, they may have roughly 800 dollars a month left for other things," added Bourland.

Given the built environment's powerful influence on a person's day-to-day healthy (or unhealthy) choices, she suggested the importance of locating housing in areas that are walkable and in close proximity to grocery stores and parks.

Across the country, an estimated $226 billion could be saved if communities were better designed to limit costly congestion and energy waste, as well as to cut the high medical costs associated with asthma, obesity and other health consequences, Bourland said.

Still, the more immediate concern for many victims is simply how to get out of their current situation and into a wealthier and healthier one. With unemployment at 55 percent for tribal members living on the Spokane Indian Reservation, according to the Seattle Times, people are eager for jobs cleaning up the radioactive and toxic chemicals that have leaked for decades into the reservation's streams, soil, plants and animals -- a $193 million project that is expected to take a decade.

"How the cleanup will occur is important," Deb Abrahamson, founder of the SHAWL Society and tribal activist, told the Times, suggesting that tribal workers should know the risks and how to protect themselves, or "we're going to have another generation facing occupational exposure to toxins."

Correction: Dr. J. Nadine Gracia announced the HHS Environmental Justice Strategy, not Lisa Garcia as the story previously reported. Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com

 

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Impossible to Hide the Decline

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Impossible to Hide the Decline

Yid with Lid — …Great Britain, which just went through two record cold winters is in store for some more. Scientists are predicting that Britain may be facing a mini-ice age that may last for decades. It’s partly the fault of the La Nina weather pattern… The real cause for this prediction is the Sun. It has been emitting few ultra violet rays (not that you would know by looking at Snooki). …the news about the arctic ice cap may be just as depressing. So far it has been very cold in the arctic this fall, in fact it has been coldest autumn the arctic has seen in over a decade. Because of this cold the arctic has added a Manhattan-sized chunk of ice to the ice cap every 30 seconds for the last 30 days… As our President, the EPA and many other progressives work to slow down the economy with crippling regulations to reduce “greenhouse gasses,” it seems that mother earth does not want to cooperate. … Read more at robomonkey.wordpress.com

 

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They Have No Hope, But Change Would Be Nice

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They Have No Hope, But Change Would Be Nice

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Bill Gates talking about killing of 0.9 billion people with health care ...

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Most Wall Street Workers Say They Expect Same Or Higher Bonus As Last Year: Survey

More than 60 percent of financial professionals believe they'll get the same or a larger bonus than last year, a survey found.

Jillian Berman

While most Americans aren’t expecting their incomes to rise with the cost of living in the near future, more than 60 percent of Wall Street professionals say they anticipate their bonuses will be higher or the same as the bonus they earned in 2010, according to a recent survey.

Sixty-two percent of Wall Street workers said they’re expecting a bonus that’s in line with last year’s or higher, according to a survey from eFinancialCareers.com. And while still a firm majority, that’s down from last year, when 71 percent of survey respondents said they expected the same or higher bonus than what they received in 2009.

The decline in expectations is likely due to a drop in confidence in big bank employees. The survey found that 38 percent of big bank employees anticipate a drop in their bonuses from last year, compared with 36 percent that are expecting an increase.

Big bank employees may be skittish because of a rash of recent layoff announcements. Bank of America plans to layoff 30,000 employees in an effort to trim about $5 billion per year the company announced last month. Barclays announced in August that it would slash about 3,000 jobs this year, while UBS said it plans to axe 5,000 jobs.

Bonus plans likely won’t be announced until January, but if last year is any indication Wall Street workers should expect their bonuses to fall. The average Wall Street bonus was down 9 percent in 2010 as the reforms in those Dodd-Frank Act aimed at curbing bonuses pushed in fact base salaries and deferred compensation up.

More than half of the survey respondents said they believed that the financial reforms played a large role in big banks’ decisions to downsize. Bank of America President Brian Moynihan and other banking industry officials have also cited the Dodd-Frank act as causing revenue declines that pushed the companies into charging consumers more fees for various checking account services.

Still there are some that think the reforms haven’t gone far enough to curb Wall Street excesses like bonuses, which came out to an average of $128,530 in 2010. Protesters, calling themselves Occupy Wall Street, have been camped out in Manhattan’s financial district since Sept. 17 demonstrating against corporate greed and income inequality among other things. The movement has inspired similar demonstrations across the country. Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com

 

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